


Threadbare

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:13:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Retaliation against Walt leads to a brutal attack against Skyler instead; Jesse finds her and tries to help her. But does she want healing or revenge?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Takes place as an AU sometime in the midst of "Gliding Over All".

Walter White was away, far away, and Skyler was thankful. She figured most women would be angry or even just sad that their husband was off on a business trip – and with a woman, no less, she had definitely caught the name “Lydia” in his hushed conversations – and that that business was the methamphetamine manufacturing ring that he had sworn up and down he was out of and done with.

But honestly, she found herself just relieved that he was out the door. When he was gone, she didn’t have to pretend, didn’t have to plant a smile on her face and play happy families with a man she no longer knew, no longer loved.

Holly was off at Hank and Marie’s, while Junior was sleeping over at Louis’ house. She had the place to herself. There was a calmness to it, a safety.

She walked around the house, watered the plants, even hummed a little to herself. Maybe today she would write. It seemed like she hadn’t written since this whole ordeal began, since Walt’s diagnosis and his consequent descent into the criminal underworld. Hell, if she wrote that story, she wondered who’d believe it. _Truth is stranger than fiction._

So, no, she wouldn’t write about that. _Couldn’t_ write about that, not even in thin swatches against her eyelids that only she would ever see. She needed to forget it, act like it all never happened, or else the blood on her hands – _Ted… God, Ted…_ \- would never come off, would never disappear. Instead, she’d write something philosophical. Maybe a merry scene. Or maybe something empowering, the kind of women’s lib stuff she used to jot down in high school where it turned out at the end that no one really needed men and their bullshit after all and the ladies could run things a hundred times better.

The doorbell rang. She turned, wondering who the hell it could be. It was too early for the mail – hopefully it wasn’t Walt barging in again, but he had a key these days. Hank or Marie? More than likely Marie, come to try and talk to her again even though she didn’t want to talk when she couldn’t tell the truth about any of this.

Skyler sighed. She opened the door without looking to see who it was, sure she’d see Marie.

There were two men standing there instead; both dressed in black, both Hispanic of some degree, Mexican or Costa Rican or Venezuelan. Late twenties, perhaps. One had a bandana tied around his head, the other wore a black baseball cap. 

“Can I help you?” she inquired. She tried to keep the shake out of her voice – because, hell, she didn’t shake, she wasn’t scared, and anything she was building up in her head about who these men might be and what connection they might have to her husband, those were all wrong because these were probably just kids looking for the wrong house or selling those damned magazine subscriptions so they could travel to Disney Land.

“We’re looking for Walter White,” the man with the cap stated.

“He isn’t home.”

“Could we come in?” 

“No.” Skyler stepped back and gripped the door. She would slam it in his face and when Walt came home…. When Walt came home she would bite his damn head off for the fact that people were coming looking for him, obviously for the wrong reasons.

Cap-man took a step inside the house.

“That’s too bad. Maybe if you had said it a little nicer…”

The door slammed. They were both inside now. Skyler turned, ran, and screamed at the top of her lungs.

***

They had left things badly. Very badly. Sure, Mr. White had come by and they’d had that incredibly awkward conversation, complete with awkward reminiscing while Jesse had an even more awkward gun strapped to his belt, but… really they had left things with that final conversation where Mr. White had told Jesse that he had nothing at all and would be nothing at all without him.

Recently, despite being five million dollars richer, Jesse was wondering if he might not have been right. Jesse had accomplished all of nothing in the past few weeks, and it was hanging over him in a way it never would have before, in the old, free days. 

He decided that he should talk to his old mentor. Set this right. After all, he didn’t know how much longer Mr. White had left. Maybe the change of heart had come, like the last, from a new pronouncement of upcoming death.

He owed it to him, didn’t he?


	2. Chapter 2

Jesse stayed parked outside of the Whites’ house for ten minutes. Was Mr. White still here, or at the condo? It was worth a try, even if Mrs. White slapped him in the face and sent him away. Maybe she would at least tell her husband that Jesse had been by, that he still cared.

He seemed to appear, seemed to materialize without movement in front of the door. He rang the doorbell and waited. He received no response other than a shiver up his spine that told him, somehow, something wasn’t right.

Jesse peeked inside the house and could see, behind a bent and busted curtain, a lamp in disarray, notebooks and pieces of paper strewn about. Maybe the Whites had just had a big argument that had turned physical. But maybe it wasn’t…

Jesse rang the doorbell again. When that failed to elicit a response, he tried the door and found it unlocked. More and more signs that something was very, very wrong. 

He stepped inside. He probably should have called someone – Mike, he’d have called Mike if he were still in the area – but it would take too long, draw too much attention. 

“Mr. White?” he called, looking around the living room. “Mr. White, are you in here? It’s Jesse.”

There was some faint sound, and at first Jesse didn’t realize where it had actually come from. It was a quieter sound, higher than the rumble of Mr. White’s voice. 

“Mr. White?” Jesse called again, more out of habit than anything, then tried, “Mrs. White? Mrs. White, are you in there?” He kept walking, quickly becoming aware that he was going to find something he didn’t want to find. His heart was pounding so loud that it seemed to be all he could hear, until he heard the faint sound again. “Mrs. White!” Jesse called. 

Now the new sound was a sound of agreement. A little pained murmur of assent. 

“Shit,” Jesse mumbled. If Mrs. White was hurt, then Mr. White was… and their kids! God, their kids.

He scanned the house with his eyes, checking every room. He checked each bedroom first, finding nothing, before he saw the door to the bathroom. The door was half-open, and he quickly opened it the rest of the way.

When he did, he stared at it, gaping. There was blood everywhere. It was smeared on the walls, like a finger-painting. He shuddered hard and moved his eyes down to where Mrs. White, Skyler, whatever he wanted to call her, it didn’t matter now, was collapsed against the bathroom’s throw-rug. Alive but very hurt, crumpled in a heap in clothes that were torn and battered. He could see bruises and more blood.

“Hey!” he called desperately, kneeling down to gently touch her shoulder. “I’m here. It’s Jesse. I’m here. I’m going to call an ambulance for you. Hold on.”

“No.” She turned her head and that was his first sign that she really was alive, that he hadn’t just imagined the call. “There’s… there’s Walt’s stuff here, they’d check, they would find…”

“That’s not important right now,” Jesse argued. He knew his ass was on the line, too, but she was dying here and he wasn’t going to let that happen just to save him. Once they got here, he could get out the door and just drive. To Oregon or somewhere, to wherever no one knew him.

“Don’t call them.” Her voice was firm. 

Jesse’s mind reeled. There had to be another way. That was the safest way, but… 

“Okay. Listen. I’m going to help carry you to my car. I’ll take you into the ER, all right? Now, what about your kids? Are they… are they okay?”

“They’re at Hank and Marie’s,” Skyler repeated in a listless voice. There was blood coming from her mouth.

“Okay, okay,” Jesse said, more to himself than to her. “Okay, let’s try and get up.” He very gently reached out his arm to take hers. “Slow, slow, stand up.” She was shaky on her feet, barely standing. Jesse reached around her back and held her up, which was a little difficult considering she was bigger than he was. “Let’s walk.” He made his voice as gentle as he could. He didn’t want to spook her, for both their sakes. He was almost at the door when he asked, “What about Mr. White? Where is he?”

“Away,” she murmured. “On some… some trip with some other woman. Lydia.” 

Jesse breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn’t going to find Mr. White’s body stashed somewhere in this house. But it also meant that telling him what happened to his wife would most likely fall to Jesse, and he had no idea how the hell he was going to do that. It had been hard enough to tell him about Hank, and that hadn’t been… all this.

Jesse opened the door, and they shuffled out the driveway until they arrived at Jesse’s car. He reached around her to open the door and helped her into the passenger’s side before making his way around to the driver’s seat. He gunned the ignition. 

When he was making decent time down the road towards the hospital, he turned back to her.

“Hey, how are you holding up?”

She didn’t answer for a long time. When she did, it was to say, “I was trying to take a shower. That’s why you found me there. I couldn’t get all the way and just passed out.”

Jesse didn’t know what to say. He bit his lip.

“You’re not supposed to, uh, take a shower, y’know. Destroys evidence.”

Skyler laughed bitterly and wiped at her mouth with her sleeve. 

“You think I’m going to the cops with this? Are you out of your mind?”

“Why not?” Jesse argued, “I mean these guys should…”

“They will immediately tell everybody that my husband is a drug dealer and that’s why I was targeted. If the cops can even find them, that is. Which is a long shot. In the meantime, I get a nice long deposition into the details.”

“But it isn’t fair,” Jesse said firmly, before softening. “Okay, listen, Mrs. White. We can talk about all this stuff later. Right now, the important thing is to get you to the hospital so you can get… get fixed up.” When he stopped at a red light, he moved a hand to her hair cautiously. The blonde was stained with red.

“What I want is a cigarette,” Skyler commented dryly. She didn’t move to push Jesse’s hand off, but didn’t acknowledge it either. 

“Well, you can’t smoke in the hospital, but once you get out, then sure, yeah, I’ll get you a whole pack. What brand do you smoke?’

“Marlboro Reds,” Skyler replied, in a far-off voice like she was recounting facts about someone else, not about herself. 

Jesse pushed the gas pedal. The sign for the hospital was up ahead. What would he do when he got there? He had no idea, but he knew he had to stick by her side. 

“You know,” he spoke in a soft, cautious voice. “This isn’t your fault.”

Skyler turned to look at him and brushed a few locks of hair out of her eyes.

“Oh, I know,” she replied. She turned to stare back at the window. “It’s Walt’s.”

They were silent the rest of the way to the hospital.


	3. Chapter 3

He had expected a lot of buzzing about when he got to the hospital. Somehow, he had expected people to rush out with stretchers like they had when they’d brought in Hank. He didn’t expect the quietness of the place as he helped her walk inside and sat her down on a plastic chair in the waiting room of the E.R.  
There was a big desk in the center of the room, and a young Asian woman was working in. A sign on the desk stated: “Everyone must sign in.”

Jesse’s head spun. He approached the desk nervously; maybe there would be cops lurking around the corner to come take him away, because they would know exactly how he knew Mr. and Mrs. White, and they would blame him for this. It was all his fault anyway, wasn’t it? He knew that much to be true. He was the bad guy and it seemed as if, suddenly, everyone knew it. Every single pair of eyes – and in the case of an African-American man with an eyepatch sitting in the corner, him too – was on him and they all knew that everything bad in the world seemed to be connected to all the bad choices Jesse had made.

“Hi,” Jesse said quickly, his words all running together. He felt like he was falling over himself, like he couldn’t get it together, but he needed to, “We need to sign in. I have… a, my friend over there. She’s been hurt bad, somebody needs to look at her and make sure that she’s okay.” By the end, his voice was pleading and he was surprised it hadn’t broke – or maybe it had. 

The nurse leaned forward a little bit. 

“Okay, what’s your friend’s name?”

“Skyler White,” Jesse blurted out, though he realized he didn’t know how to actually spell it. How was it spelled? Skylar? Schulyer? Luckily, she didn’t ask, just wrote down something or other and handed Jesse a clipboard. 

“Just fill this out and we’ll be right with her.”

Well, the nurse was taking this all pretty well, Jesse thought bitterly. Then again, she must see this shit every day. If she crumbled under fire then she wouldn’t be a very good nurse, would she?

Jesse was about to pull out his hair as he walked back over to Skyler. 

“Hey, they’ll call you up,” he told her, slowly taking a seat. He left an empty seat in between them, to give her some more space. “How are you holding up?”  
Skyler simply shook her head, like words were escaping her now, or maybe like she’d run out of things to say. So Jesse felt the need to fill the silence. Maybe he could do some good here. He thought with a start that he really needed to call Mr. White and let him know what was going on. Had the man brought a burner with him? If so, which one?

“Would you like me to call Mr. White?” he asked her softly. “He should know what’s happened. You know that he would rush back to be with you right now. He would never want you to get hurt. Not ever.”

Skyler frowned and made a gesture that indicated that she was brushing off the possibility. 

“He’s in Europe,” she declared dryly. “With Lydia.” The name had a soft burn behind it. “Czech Republic, I think he said.”

Burners wouldn’t even work in Europe, Jesse remembered. Not only that, but there was no way of knowing when Mr. White would be back. He was going to have to handle this one on his own.

“Skyler?” a voice called from the desk. She tried to stand up but stumbled as she rose; Jesse put his hand back under her arm to steady her. 

“Some help!” he called. “Please!”

A few nurses appeared and helped Jesse support her, guiding the two of them into another room until one directed Skyler to have a seat and then turned to Jesse.

“Are you her son?”

Jesse knew what was coming. He’d been through it all with Brock. He did briefly consider lying, saying yes he was. Would Mrs. White contradict him? Probably. She didn’t want or need Jesse around; Jesse was a reminder of everything horrible, everything that had led to this.

Skyler didn’t say yes or no in response to the question. She simply looked over at the nurse, locking eyes with her and speaking in a determined monotone.

“I want him here.”

“Ma’am…” the nurse began, but Skyler’s look held no room for argument. Jesse would stay. “All right then, ma’am. But are you sure you don’t want him to step out so that you can get a little privacy?”

Skyler looked around, like she wasn’t totally sure what she was being asked. Finally, she shrugged.

“Yeah. Okay. Jesse… Wait outside. Okay?” 

Jesse nodded so hard that his neck felt like it had whiplash. He turned to stumble outside the room and swallowed hard as the nurse shut the door. What exactly would they need to do? Was it going to be scary? Then again, nothing much seemed to scare Mrs. White. She was tough. But this… this would scare anybody, wouldn’t it?

Jesse shoved his hands in the pocket of his hoodie and let out a strangled breath. What was he going to do?


	4. Chapter 4

As soon as Jesse left the room, Skyler wished that she’d asked him to stay. It was a ridiculous thought, the product of a traumatized mind (or so she told herself) – what was the worst that some nurse could do to her and what in the hell could Jesse Pinkman ever protect her from? She was thankful he had brought her to the hospital but, apart from that, he really didn’t need to stay. She was convinced that he would be quite fine getting sent on his way and hopefully never mentioning this whole horror to Walt. Because if Walt found out, well, good luck trying to put it behind her. He’d bring it up at family dinners or something. 

“Okay, Ms. White,” the nurse told her. She reached out, hanging a hospital gown on the chair behind her. “I’m just going to step out a moment so you can change into this. Then we’ll go ahead and give you your medical exam, all right?”

Skyler nodded, kicking her foot back a moment, like she was a young girl again, bored on a school trip or a family vacation. It all felt hazy. 

As the nurse left, Skyler began to look around the room in a new kind of panic. What if these men, whomever they were, came back? Maybe she had never been supposed to live through it, or she was supposed to be left as a message to Walt, whenever he came back? If Jesse Pinkman hadn’t happened upon her, that’s what would have happened, she was sure of it. 

How long before they realized their plan hadn’t worked and they decided to send a worse message? 

But the kids were with Hank and Marie. Not much safer a place than the house of a DEA agent, right?

She changed into the hospital gown, shivering in the cold. The last time she had put on one of these, she’d been getting ready to give birth to Holly. Walt hadn’t been there with her that time, either – he’d been off running his meth empire yet again. That time, she had been so excited, so ready to hold her new baby girl, her Holly. 

That little girl had been so beautiful, so full of life. She still was. Skyler, on the other hand, felt nothing but emptiness inside, a sense of foreboding that wouldn’t quit.

When the nurse came back in, Skyler barely heard her as she told her to lie back on the hospital bed and bring her knees up to her chest. Everything else was little blurs of discomfort and sometimes pain, flanked by a shame that she wished would go away. She knew all the platitudes, the ones Jesse had helpfully reminded her of, that it wasn’t her fault.

She wished that that mattered. 

“Okay, well,” the nurse told her, “You’re all cleaned up and your test results will be back in a few days.”

She walked off in a daze towards the waiting Jesse and wished that a few days meant something to her anymore.

***

“Mrs. White… You need to head back to your hospital room, they said.”

Jesse was having some trouble getting the words to actually come out of his mouth at all, let alone come out right. He was sure without a shadow of a doubt that whatever he said would come out wrong, especially since Mrs. White seemed to be wandering blind. She’d tried to walk out of the hospital entirely, even though she was only wearing the hospital gown. 

“Let me help you.” 

He extended his arm. He’d watched a show one time on blind people, on how someone helping to guide them should let the person take their hand instead of grabbing on to theirs. It seemed to make a lot of sense.

Skyler looked around more and, seeming to not find a better solution, took hold of Jesse’s arm. He led her back into her hospital room, wondering if there wasn’t someone else around who should be doing this, someone who had training and who knew what they were doing. Someone who wouldn’t screw it up and make Mrs. White worse off than she already was.

Jesse picked up the remote. “Do you know what you want to watch?” he asked her, and she shook her head. “What about… soap operas?” he suggested. “My aunt always used to like them. She watched them for years, she could tell you all about who cheated on who and who was secretly who back from the dead.”

“I cheated on Walt,” Skyler supplied, so softly that Jesse thought that maybe he had imagined it at first. When he realized he had not imagined it, that just left him with even less to actually say about it. But she seemed to want him to say something.

“That’s pretty understandable,” he ventured. “I mean, you must have felt like he was sneaking around on you all the time. And I mean, you didn’t even know it was to cook.”

“No, I did. I knew very early on,” Skyler spoke louder this time, and her voice grew in intensity, becoming frenetic, what Jesse was thinking might be called hysterical. “I wanted him to leave. Wanted him to go so I did that. Do you think he’ll go now?”  
Jesse shook his head.

“Mrs. White, whatever’s between the two of you, I really don’t know, honestly. I don’t know at all and it’s not anything to do with me. But what I do know is what happened at your house? That wasn’t your fault.”

Skyler shook her head like she heard what he was saying but somehow couldn’t process it, couldn’t understand it. 

“And I know… Mr. White… he’s kind of an asshole but I’m pretty sure that he would agree with me. Once he gets home…”

“Once he gets home he’ll be right back at it, back at the drug dealing and murdering, regardless of what might have happened to me.”

Jesse shook his head. 

“He always talked about you. He had to be sure that if anything ever happened to him, that you and your kids would get the money. He would never want you to be hurt.”

“He’ll fancy himself a vigilante, then.”

“Mrs. White, I think the only thing he’ll want to do is be sure that you’re okay.”

Skyler glared at him.

“Okay? What’s that? Okay doesn’t exist for me right now, Jesse. So if that’s what you or he are hoping for, then you’re going to be out of luck. Get out of her and leave me the hell alone.”


	5. Chapter 5

Jesse wanted to slink away after he had made the phone call, slink away like a cat hiding in a small, safe space until someone would lay out some food or coax him out with promises that they weren’t going to kill him. He was pretty sure that he wasn’t about to receive any of those promises from Mrs. White. She had explicitly told him not to call anyone, and he understood her point of course, but as he thought about it more and more it became glaringly clear that she shouldn’t be alone.

He twiddled his thumbs. It wasn’t like he had wanted to tell them who he was when he called; he and Hank Schrader were not exactly friends, after all, and he didn’t know his wife (Skyler’s sister) at all, but he figured that anything that she had heard about him was unlikely to be positive. He had almost gotten Schrader fired, he had lured Mr. White into smoking pot (if they only knew), he was involved in some way shape or form with Tuco Salamanca, blue meth, and all kinds of other shady dealings. He was not the person Marie Schrader wanted to get this sort of news from.

He had almost hung up when she had answered. 

“Hi… uhh… this is Mrs. Schrader?”

“…This is she. Who is this calling?”

“Listen, you don’t really know me but… This is Jesse Pinkman. And, uh, I went to your house and, your sister, she was hurt and I took her to the hospital and I wanted to call you because I think… I think she would want you to be there with her.”

“Hurt? Hurt how? What happened? Why were you even over there?”

“I… I don’t really want to say,” Jesse stammered.

“I want to hear answers right now!” Marie demanded. “What did you do to my sister?”

In the background, he heard the voice of Hank, though what he was saying was not quite clear.

“I didn’t hurt her,” Jesse responded quickly, “I went to her house to try and find Mr. White. He wasn’t there but the door was opened and it looked like someone had broken in. I went in to see what was going on and…” He tried to keep calm but the emotion was already starting to catch up with him, and he heard his voice broke. “Listen. Just get up here, okay? I’m at the hospital.” He mumbled out the name of the hospital, hoping he sounded at least vaguely coherent, and then hung up. He dragged his hands over his face, wondering what the hell he was going to do once Hank and Marie showed up. They were going to want to kill him, and he couldn’t really blame them – if someone had given him a call like that about Jane or Andrea, he would be shooting first and asking questions later, the same way he had when he’d confronted Mr. White about Brock getting poisoned.

It seemed like only minutes later when Hank and Marie Schrader appeared. He found himself wishing only Marie had come, thinking of the few shows he had seen dealing with the topic where the women who were victimized only wanted other women around. Not that he could have pointed that out over the phone without making everything that had happened painstakingly clear, and he hadn’t wanted to say the words. They didn’t seem like his to say. In which case, he was going to have to be the one to tell Mr. White, wasn’t he? How in the hell was he going to ever do that?

“What the hell did you do to my sister?” Marie demanded as soon as she saw him. 

“Or is this another one of your stunts to try and draw me out?” Hank chimed in. “Just like when you called and said that Marie was in the hospital? I swear to God, you little shit, if you’re playing me for a fool again I’m going to make what I did to you the last time seem like a love tap!”  
Jesse shivered, both believing him and understanding the anger behind the threat. 

“She’s right in there,” he said. He had expected defensiveness to appear in his voice, but there was nothing but resignation. He hadn’t wanted to be the bearer of this horrible news (who would?), but he couldn’t see Skyler picking up the phone and calling either one of them.

It had had to be him.

“She needs you.” The words came out in a mumble, but they seemed to do their job – Marie and Hank walked past him, into the hospital room, without another word.

***

Skyler slowly opened her eyes, immediately hating the feeling of the hospital gown around her. It felt as if her skin had been stripped off, too, and replaced with some kind of one-size-fits-all bullshit that was undoubtedly going to rain down upon her in a way that she couldn’t escape it no matter which direction she turned.

She decided that the only thing she could do was to decide to close her eyes all over again, but her attempt to do so was thwarted by the sound of the door clicking open and Hank and Marie, of all the people, walking inside the room.

It could have been worse, she tried to tell herself, it could have been Walt.

“Skyler!” Marie exclaimed, running to her side. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Skyler tried to think of a lie, tried to think of a reason that wouldn’t bring this all back on her and Walt. She didn’t even know why she had the effort to do so anymore… why didn’t she just tell them the whole story from beginning to end and lay blame where it was due? Because it was certainly the case that she would not be laying here if it hadn’t been for Walt and the things that he had done. 

Eventually she just scowled and looked at Marie.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re not going to get out of it that easy!” Marie declared, putting her hands on her hips. “You’re in the hospital looking like somebody beat the tar out of you, and you’ve got that petty criminal Pinkman standing out there in the hall looking out for you, or something. What’s going on? Did Pinkman do something? You know that I can have Hank lock him up just like that, I mean I’m sure that he’s done something that we can prove, right?”

Skyler knotted her hands in her hair.

“No, Pinkman didn’t do anything. It was some men who broke in. It was random. I don’t want to talk about it and no I don’t want to do anything about it. Pinkman came by looking for Walt for whatever damn reason. I guess it’s good that he did. He saw the open door and felt like something was wrong, came in and was my knight in shining armor or whatever you want to call it. Now could you please just leave me alone?”  
Marie just kept staring at her sister with her hand up to her mouth. 

“Do you really want Pinkman to stay here?” she pressed. “It must be uncomfortable with him around, and knowing about what happened. I can ask him to leave, I can get him out of here.”

Skyler sighed.

“Marie, there isn’t anything you can do to make this better. Don’t you understand? This happened, and whether Pinkman is there or not there… I actually am okay with him staying. I guess… I guess since he sort of knows firsthand… it makes it easier. At least that’s one person I don’t have to tell about this at least.”

Marie put her head in her hands.

“What are we going to do, Skyler? What are we going to do?”


	6. Chapter 6

Skyler came home later that night, and Jesse was at her side. When they walked through the front door they noticed all the broken things that hadn’t seemed important before. There were overturned lamps and broken glass everywhere. 

Jesse walked to a closet and picked up a broom and dustpan.

“Take a seat somewhere it’s safe,” he told her. “I’ll clean this up. It’s probably like, medically necessary for you to be resting okay?”

Skyler shook her head but sat down anyway. 

“I’ll clean up,” Jesse repeated. “I’ll make all of this go away. By the time you wake up, it’ll be like none of this ever happened.”

But he knew that was the most wishful thinking ever. It wasn’t something that could happen to you that you could just brush off. It had to be something that got under your skin and stayed there for the rest of your life… 

Jesse didn’t know anything about it personally, but the look in Skyler’s eyes said it all. She was never going to be okay again. Where was Mr. White? He knew her. Maybe he would know what to do, what to say.

Skyler lay down across her couch, grabbing a pillow and hugging it to her chest. She hated this feeling of vulnerability – it just wasn’t her. It wasn’t how she operated or how she had ever seen herself. She had always been in control and she had thought there would be nothing that could change that.

She wasn’t content to sit and wait to heal, however. Her blood was boiling, and she was fixated on something, on an idea that came to her through her own heart as well as more than one late night movie she’d caught as a teenager. 

Skyler pictured killing them all. The thought brought a smile to her face.

***

“Everything’s cleaned up,” Jesse explained with a shy smile. “Nothing to worry about. Do you want me to stay here, just in case?” In his head he wondered how this would work out. He couldn’t stay here forever, but would the men come back? Jesse had to do something if they did, but what that something was, he didn’t know. They weren’t men he thought he would particularly mind if he had to kill, but there may be a lot of them.

“You can do what you want,” Skyler replied, rolling her head towards him. She didn’t have much effort to do anything but think, think about killing them all. But could she really go down that road? Killing a person was something that you couldn’t take back, hadn’t she said that much to Walt? That she couldn’t raise her children in a house where hurting and killing people was okay? What if they found out, somehow? Could she really tell them that it was okay, this was different, these men, they had it coming?

“I’ll stay here, then,” Jesse said. It was the voice of a boy, of a kid, trying to be man of the house even though he knew he wasn’t. Who was, though? Walt had vacated, and as far as Skyler was concerned, he could stay that way. Hank had interviewed for the job in every way except for actually sleeping with her – he seemed to think it was his duty to help out poor helpless Skyler whose crazy cancer-ridden husband had vanished yet again, in another eight-month fugue state. She was pretty sure he was suspecting some of what was going on, though. Good for him, if he was, but she wasn’t going to tell him a thing. 

She wasn’t going to tell anyone a thing. She was going to get through this on her own. It wasn’t like she could walk into some counseling office and tell them about this, not that it had ever been her thing. That had been Marie; Marie couldn’t help but love having someone around to listen to all her problems. She’d always gotten Skyler to listen to them when they were kids, and now there was… Dave, or whatever his name was. 

Whose colleague Skyler was still allegedly talking to. Marie would probably check in about that, so it would help to keep that story straight. No need to have to deal with the other thing on top of this. 

She reached up to rub her temple, and sighed. There was no way in Hell that she’d talk to a man, some professional man, about this. Admittedly, in a way she’d already talked to Jesse Pinkman about this. 

“You can’t tell Walt about this. If you can even find him.” She rubbed her head again. This would actually be perfect for him. He could use this as an excuse for all of Skyler’s behavior, for the walk into the pool. It’d made her think of The Awakening, of the final freedom of women being a walk into the endless sea. Walt could look like the suffering good guy when all, all of this was his fault. His choices had made this come raining down on his family.

“Mrs. White… I won’t, if you don’t want to, but… I mean, what are we going to do about this?” 

“We? When did we become a ‘we’? Where is there a ‘we’ in this, Jesse Pinkman?”

“When I found you,” Jesse replied firmly. “I don’t know much about this whole thing, Mrs. White, but…”

“Then don’t comment on it,” Skyler told him icily. “Thank you for all you’ve done, Jesse, but you need to go now.”

“But what if they come back?” Jesse asked, “What if you need something?”

“I don’t need you, is what I don’t need. I barely even know you, and what I do know about you is all the awful ways you’re mixed up with my husband, who hasn’t been the man I married in a long, long time.”

“You didn’t answer the first part. What if these people come back? I’m not leaving you here on your own to get hurt.”

“Because you’re so noble.”

Jesse stared at her.

“No. Because I’m holding on to whatever part of my humanity I’ve got left. It’s not much, but it’s something, Mrs. White. It’s my own selfish reasons, but… that’s what it is. I want to go to sleep for once thinking that I’m a human.”

Skyler shook her head, annoyed. 

“Sure. Stay. But shut up. I’m tired of listening to you talk.”

***

Skyler closed her eyes. It was all closing in on her now. Again. She could feel hands over her, could feel the breath in her ear. 

Her eyes flew open again. How was she ever supposed to sleep again? How did people that this happened to ever go back to living their lives? 

Not that it had been much of a life, recently. Or ever. 

Skyler tried to think back to a time when her life had ever been white picket fences. Compared to this hell, the worst of the early days had been, but even then… She remembered how Marie used to sneak around and steal things to get away from their dismal home life. How their father was always moving around, seeing whomever he could work the next con on these days, and how their mother had told them more than once that she’d take off entirely if she didn’t have to provide for two “little whiny bitches” like them. Oh, how that woman used to rail. Their mother could complain from dawn til dusk, until Skyler had gotten tired of it and told her to shut the hell up and leave them alone, to look at what it was doing to Marie especially.

She remembered how that comment had backfired, remembered the weeks that went by in which the woman didn’t speak to them at all. It had sent Marie into hysterics, had set her off stealing things again, slipping them into her purse even in stores that everyone knew had security. Skyler would always be the one to go haul her home, as her mother would pace up and down the steps mumbling to herself about how her life had been stolen, not saying anything to Skyler but making sure she was around to hear it.  
What a relief it had been to flee that and put together what seemed like such a normal life with Walt.

“Mrs. White?”

Her eyes snapped open again, and she found herself looking at Jesse.

“Can you go somewhere?” she snapped, “I don’t need you hanging over my shoulder every five seconds. That’s not making me feel safer, that’s making me feel creeped out!”

“Okay, okay.” Jesse put up his hands. “I just wanted to ask if you needed anything. I mean, water or… or anything. Honestly, I don’t really know what to do in this situation… I just… I want to help, Mrs. White… That’s all.”

“I know, I know. But… Jesse… There is no way to help. What’s done is done. This isn’t something that you can undo.”

“There never is,” Jesse whispered, “But…” He trailed off, and Skyler wondered what he could be thinking about. 

“Then you just have… to give me time. You need to wait for me to figure out what I’m going to do next. Jesse, whatever stereotypes you have of women, whether you think that we’re people who just sit around waiting to feel something, to rant about something and to cry about something… I plan. I’m going to plan.”

“Plan what, Mrs. White?” Jesse looked worried, and Skyler thought to herself that he ought to be. She certainly was. The images that were floating around in her head were images that she would have never thought possible in her old life, in the life before Walt turned out to be someone turned inside out, someone who hurt people and killed people and held himself up as a hero in spite of or even because of doing those things. 

“It’s nothing for you to worry about. Go back to your life, whatever it was before. Walt’s gone. You’re free.”

“My life? I haven’t had a life since your husband came in and screwed everything up. Since then, everything I thought I had… well it fell apart, went to shit. All of my friends are dead… Everyone I love gets taken from me…”

“Oh, quit belly-aching,” Skyler snapped, “I’m the one who just got out of the damn hospital. No one is putting a gun to your head and telling you that this is something you need to be involved with. You can go out that door, and you don’t need to feel bad. You really don’t. I’m not some fragile…”

“I’m not going out that door,” Jesse told her firmly. “I’m staying here.”

“Fine. Stay. Do whatever you want. It isn’t as if anyone listens to me about anything these days, anyway.”

Skyler walked up to her room, opened the door, shut it with a slam, and collapsed on the bed.

Was she really going to do this – the idea that kept presenting itself in her mind? The idea where she went and mowed down each one of these guys where they stood? Where would she even start looking for them? It wasn’t as if she could just find them on facebook or something. 

And then when she found them… what would she do then? Could she really hold a gun or a knife over a man’s head and kill him, and end his life?

That was something you don’t come back from. Hadn’t that been what she kept telling herself when Walt had come back home? She couldn’t sleep next to, or with, a killer. If she did this thing, then every night when she went to bed she would be sleeping with one. That was something she would never be able to erase. 

What was she going to do?


	7. Chapter 7

For some reason, Jesse was still there when she got up in the morning. He was fast asleep on her couch, and Skyler was hard-pressed to wake him up. If she woke him up, she’d probably be expected to make some sort of conversation, and today that just wasn’t happening.

She just needed to get back on with her life, already. Get the kids back from Hank and Marie and go back to pretending that somehow, everything was going to end up being okay, even though nothing was okay.

Maybe she would try to call Walt one more time.

She didn’t even know why – did she want to yell at him, blame him for this thing that had happened, that she couldn’t get out of her head? Or did she want to hear him say that everything would be all right – maybe that he would handle it, so she could just sit back and rest.

There was something wrong in that, though. When had Skyler ever been some kind of damsel in distress? When, ever in her life, had she sit back and rested? Didn’t she tell Walt that she was the one who needed to protect the family…from him?

And far be it for her to ruin his European vacation with, what was her name, Lydia?

Yes, that was right. Walt and Lydia could both go burn in hell. She didn’t need either of them. She would figure out what to do, the right thing to do, and when she did, if she ever got a hold of Walt again, she would cut him loose for good. Give back all of his filthy drug money and live her own life. Because goddamn, after what had happened, didn’t she finally deserve that much at least? 

But first she’d have to deal with Jesse.

She walked over and gently shook him awake.

“What?” he mumbled, opening his eyes, “What’s… what’s going on? I’m here, I’m here, I’m here…” He rolled off the couch and on to the floor, before haphazardly standing up.

“It’s time for you to go home, Jesse Pinkman. Don’t you have a home?” There was an edge to her voice. The first step to getting back to normalcy was getting rid of her unwanted houseguest. 

“But what if they come back?” Jesse asked, puppy dog eyes all big and in full force. How, in this, had he managed to make her feel bad for him? Considering all that had happened, she should at least be able to feel sorry for herself for about five minutes instead of having to worry about this damn kid. The kid who had waltzed into her life and helped her husband ruin everything for her.

“Then I’ll deal with it. Like you’re going to be able to deal with anything?” Her voice started to break, started to sound raspy. Maybe she had just been shouting too much and maybe her throat was bleeding at this point. “You look like you’re twelve!”

“I look like I’m twelve?” Jesse seemed to be starting to get annoyed. Good, Skyler thought, let someone other than her feel something about this for once. Let someone else feel something instead of telling her it was going to be okay when it obviously wasn’t. Let someone else try and run around, try and find her philandering drug-dealing murdering husband, because this had been the last straw.

Maybe that was it. Maybe she should just pick up her stuff and go, like the time she had gotten to the Four Corners monument but for some reason she didn’t know, had turned back. She couldn’t leave. Why couldn’t she leave? Had it been Walt calling her back, some part of her that despite it all still loved some part of him? Or was it just some kind of weird feeling, some inertia, some laziness that had made her turn around and go home?

She could have brought Holly with her… They could have started all over again. If she had left, this day wouldn’t be here. She would be the nice single mother with the adorable infant.

She would have never seen her son again. Could she have made that choice?

She sighed. Of course not. There was no way that she could leave Junior with Walt; it was hard enough having Hank and Marie take care of them – but having them over there was proving necessary already. This was what Walter White had brought into her home.

She thought, for a moment, about just finally telling Hank. Then maybe he could take over and just run some DEA case on Walt, lock him up and then the nightmare would be over.

That wouldn’t take away this nightmare that had already happened the previous night, however. That wouldn’t punish these men for what they had done to her. 

Eventually she rolled her eyes at Jesse again and, eventually, went back to bed. She’d sleep, and she would think about what to do. Then, she would do it. The same way she approached everything; she would do it logically. There had to be an answer, and it was probably staring her right in the face. She was just too tired to see it.

***

When she woke in the morning, she didn’t see Jesse Pinkman anywhere, and that made things seem a little bit more normal. She could go about life like she normally did. After a few minutes spent wandering around the house aimlessly, she told herself that she needed to get it together (though what “it” was, exactly, she wasn’t quite sure). She would get back to her routine, and she would do it right now. With the kids at Hank and Marie’s, she should be trying to get errands done, and then she should go ahead and open up the car wash. That was what she needed to do.

Skyler took a deep breath. First, she should go ahead and take care of groceries. Her refrigerator was nearly bare at this point.   
She got dressed, slung her purse over her shoulder, and ventured out the door. The second that her foot hit the front yard, she started to feel flustered, wondered if this was what agoraphobia felt like. It seemed as if the world was closing in on her. Everything seemed to be swooping down from the heavens, planning to kill her, planning to bring her back to some dark lair.

But Skyler was a woman who had never truly been afraid in her life, or so she liked to think. So she continued on until she arrived at the car. 

From the car to the parking lot, her eyes were darting around, sure that someone was going to try and run her off the road, like this was Ben-Hur or something. 

But whatever these men wanted from her, from Walter… didn’t they already have it? They had made their point, whatever their point was. There was no need to terrorize her further. It would be beating a dead horse at this point.

Or so, at least, she liked to think. 

And so she opened the door in the parking lot and exited, letting her shoes crackle against the asphalt. She wasn’t going to let this stop her. She was going to go right on living. All she had needed was a breather, and then she would be back and ready to go. Once she was breathing normally, life would be okay again. Well, maybe not okay, not exactly, not after Walter.

When was the last time that life had really been okay? Before Walt’s diagnosis? Back when they thought they had all the world at their fingertips? When Walt was going to be a big shot scientist and she’d be a famed short story writer and they’d have three healthy children? 

Life didn’t work out that way. She should have known that by now. Hadn’t her own life, and Marie’s too, started out in such a way? Hadn’t they been the perfect family, a mother and father and two perfect daughters? 

Where had it all gone horribly wrong? When had she ended up married to a drug dealer, or manufacturer, and Marie had ended up as a kleptomaniac mess who was only ever barely keeping it together? Whose husband was always in danger and probably wouldn’t live to see any children they might have?

Then again, she might end up with Skyler’s at this rate. 

Maybe that was the plan she should have gone with. Maybe she should have dropped the kids off with Hank and Marie and then just took off into the sunset. Changed her name and never again thought about her old life, maybe even find somebody new, start an entirely new family. People had done it, hadn’t they?

That was what her father had done, after all. After she and Marie both moved out, there had been those pictures in e-mails of him hanging all over some woman with long black hair. Skyler couldn’t even remember the woman’s name, that was how rarely they had seen him after that. He wasn’t a part of their lives, he hadn’t walked either of his daughters down the aisle.

He had moved on – but on to what? Something bigger and better? Maybe that was the way life should be. Maybe that was the mindset Skyler should have; forty wasn’t too old to wipe the slate clean. Junior and Holly would cope, wouldn’t they? Maybe in time they would forget that Skyler and Walt had even existed. And maybe that, sadly, would be for the best. 

She had moved into the cereal aisle when she spotted the boots.

The black boots. They were surrounded in something silver – maybe steel but then again, maybe not. They looked a little rusted.

She’d seen those boots before. She’d seen them for minutes, or had it been hours?

She slipped behind and endcap display and peeked around. She’d always felt too big to sneak, like a bull in a china shop. But she needed this now – needed to not be seen, but be able to observe. Because if this was the man she was sure it was… Then she had options.


	8. Chapter 8

She would not call Jesse; that much was certain. All she need right now was that little shit moralizing in her ear and telling her not to do anything stupid, to wait for Walt to come back and handle it. Only, he’d be calling Walt “Mr. White”, and she’d be trying hard not to strangle the punk.

Or were those reservations just another voice in her own head? Another angel on her shoulder? Sure, she could just let this go, and try to heal and forgive and all of that Lifetime movie bullshit, but it didn’t seem feasible. 

Maybe she should call Walt. This was the kind of thing he did, after all – kill people at the drop of a dime and not care who he hurt in the process; Walt only cared about getting what he wanted.

Was that the person she was turning into now, too? Was she getting to be bloodthirsty? Maybe she should leave it all behind, grab Holly and take off into some other country, live a completely different life and not be there waiting when Walt got back from Prague. It would serve the man right, after all. Who should wait for that man?

She should go home and recoup, make new plans. That was what she should do. Making a plan out of emotion wouldn’t help – that was the kind of stupid thing Walt did, as much as people loved to call women “overemotional”. She had always been the practical one, even when that voice inside had been telling her she had the right to want to tear Walt apart, and even the right to actually do it. She had been the one to stay calm, to come up with the money-laundering scheme, to come up with the gambling story. She had been the one.

She had to find out who this man was and figure out his routine, find out how to get ahold of him when he was at his most vulnerable – wasn’t that how people planned the perfect crime? People always got caught on crime shows if they got so emotionally invested that they left evidence behind.

Unfortunately, though, she might not be able to do it alone. She couldn’t spend all her time following this guy around and trying not to get caught. He was probably good at covering his tracks – he was a criminal, after all.

And to find a criminal, she would need to call a criminal. Not Jesse, though – he seemed to be hellbent on analyzing everything she did and trying to talk about it. The time for talking had long since passed; it was all about action now.

She picked up her phone and dialed the number. She didn’t have it saved in there, of course – that would be an amateur mistake, and she deleted it after every time she called. If somebody asked… well, she’d come up with a story. That was what she had always been good at, after all. The storyteller.

She paused a moment and then pushed the “Call” button. If she was going to do this, she was going to have to, sadly, learn from Walt – he had a whole team ready to do his bidding, after all. He had Jesse, Saul, and… well, there had to be other people he worked with. What about that “business associate” who had given him a black eye in that bar fight? Maybe that had been someone. And, of course, Gale Boetticher, not that she could call him.

“Saul Goodman’s office,” a bored voice answered. Skyler hated that woman, whoever the hell she was.

“I need to speak to Mr. Goodman immediately. This is Skyler White.”

“I’ll let him know. Right now he’s with a client…”

“I don’t care whether he is with the Pope himself. Put him on right this minute.” At the very least, Skyler still had the wherewithal to bark orders at secretaries; that was a bit ironic, as her new persona as the “cashier at a car wash”, wasn’t she little more than a glorified secretary herself, whether she owned the place or not? Hadn’t she played up the blonde stereotypes people always projected on her in order to save Ted’s lying ass?

It took a while, and Skyler was sure she heard some rather suspect rustling in the background, but eventually Saul Goodman’s lilting voice graced her with its presence.

“Hello, my dear.”

She cut right to the chase.

“I’m going to need some names and addresses. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

***

“While I appreciate the sentiment – and I catch your drift and I, listen, I respect what you’re going through, Mrs. White – Skyler, may I call you Skyler? And I am totally with you on this, I fear that going off, ahem, half-cocked may be…”

“If you say ‘half-cocked’ again, I will half-cock my foot up your ass, Saul. I didn’t ask you to tell me if I was doing the right thing – if I want advice on my moral decisions, I’m not going to go to you for it.”

“I’m not talking about morals. I’m talking about behaving sensibly. I…”

“Walt had ten men murdered in prison in the course of minutes.”

“I… didn’t have anything to do with that.” Saul’s voice was getting more nervous by the moment, and he was looking around, seemingly for bugs or something else incriminating. “And I wouldn’t have. Once they start going for the lawyers…”

“Then everyone else says, ‘That’s a good start’,” Skyler said dryly.

Saul was actually speechless for a moment, or maybe he was busy swallowing his tongue or trying to figure out what the next flight he could get on to get out of the state. 

“Are you planning to help me, Saul? Or should I just give them your address and they can come and see you next?”

Skyler wouldn’t have done it, at least, she was pretty sure of that. No one deserved that. But he did deserve the threat of it.

She heard Saul let out a long sigh.

“I’ll look into it. See if I can figure out who any of these guys are. But I’ll give you some free advice – and nothing is ever free with me – you should leave this where it stands. Or walk away and go start a new life somewhere else. Nothing good can come from this. I know they said in the posters that no jury would convict that chick from I Spit on Your Grave, but nobody ever followed up with what happened to her after the movie, either. You can’t come back from something like that.”

“Just get me the names,” Skyler replied, pressing the “hang up” button and then throwing her phone to the ground. She wanted to stomp on it.

***

“Del Martinez.” Skyler hadn’t even had a chance to say hello before Saul told her the name, followed by an address and a caution: “You didn’t get it from me, and anything you do with this information, I have nothing to do with. But if I may ask you to just take a moment and consider all of your options before running head-long into a course of action.”

“I’ll need to plan carefully, of course,” Skyler told him, “I’m not going to run head-long into anything. But I have to wonder if you happened to give my husband the same advice before he went, sold drugs, and hurt and killed people, some of whom were probably a lot more innocent than ‘Del Martinez’.”

“Well, the first thing, we shouldn’t be talking about this on the phone. I shouldn’t have even given you the name over the phone but to be honest, these days I’m more than a little afraid of you – but the other thing is, your husband never needed any prodding from me to do what he felt the need to do.”

“Then I don’t either. I just need help.”

“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Skyler pictured her hands tightening around Saul Goodman’s neck, and found it to be an extremely pleasant mental image. Calming, in fact. 

“I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up. She couldn’t go in alone, that much was true – but she didn’t need Saul or any of his bullshit, either. There was someone who would be in her corner, whether she wanted him there or not.

She didn’t want to be able to rethink it. There wasn’t time to rethink it – who knew if this guy was even still in town? He could be on the move right now, off to hurt other women for whatever reason he could conjure up, or none at all.

Skyler felt better when she thought about it like that – she was protecting other women; this was a mission for good, for feminism or something. If she was being honest, however, Skyler didn’t really care much about whatever other women she may save.

She just wanted to see each and every one of them dead.


	9. Chapter 9

“Mrs. White, this is a mistake. Why won’t you listen to me when I tell you it’s a mistake? Just let it go.”

Skyler considered saying something, or perhaps physically throttling him for saying that she should “let it go”, but remembered that she sort of needed him at the moment and physically attacking him would be a bad way to go about getting allies.

“You’ll keep telling me that it’s a mistake, but you’re going to turn around and help me anyway, because you feel guilty.” She didn’t add “because of my husband” as she got the feeling Jesse felt guilty about a great many things; what actually was his fault and what was not, she wasn’t sure. Nor did she really care at the moment.

“Not because I feel guilty,” Jesse argued, “But because I don’t want to see you get yourself killed. I kind of like…” He trailed off, and for one awkward moment Skyler thought that he was going to say that he liked her, in some kind of fifth grade boy sort of way, and she would have to hang her head and then bash it into something. Instead he finished with, “I kind of like you being all in one piece. Makes me feel more comfortable with the whole situation.”

Skyler sighed.

“Have you even done something like this before? Killed someone?”

He flinched at that, and Skyler found herself feeling bad for a moment. Of course, Walter had made this babe in the woods slaughter someone; she didn’t want to know who. She didn’t want to consider the lengths that her husband had gone to, because she would probably have to surpass them to get out of this alive. Unscathed was something that already wasn’t going to happen.

Eventually, he managed, “Yes. Twice. I don’t like it.”

“You’ll probably like it more this time around. These guys deserve it, and you won’t be the one killing them. I need you to leave that to me.”

Jesse stared at her.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I keep hearing that,” Skyler shot back, before putting her hands up and waving them. “But guess what? I’m serious. This is, in fact, my extremely serious face. How do you like it?”

Jesse let out a small hiss.

“Okay. Whatever. You just need to follow my lead. This isn’t your thing.”

Skyler got the feeling that this wasn’t Jesse’s “thing”, either, at least not by his own choice. Maybe she had reached out to him because it had been the closest thing to having Walt there to help. Walt had been there for her before, and she’d tried to be there for him, even if sometimes it seemed to all get lost in things she’d said in anger and frustration. Maybe there was some part of her that still missed him, still wanted him around to the point where she’d settle for… maybe the next best thing or maybe a far, far second. 

“Okay then, lead, and I’ll follow. What do we need to do to take out the trash, Jesse?”

“Well, first things first, you need to sort of make sure that you’re not going to get caught.”

***

“The lawyer told me I was doing business with professionals. It seems he might have meant that lightly.”

The bearded gun dealer – Lawson, he’d said his name was – was looking over Skyler and Jesse with a quite skeptical eye.

“It’s not that I don’t sell to beginners,” he continued, “But there’s a learning curve with a good deal of these that I’m not sure you’re ready for.”

“I’m ready to do whatever I need to do,” Skyler shot back, narrowing her eyes at him.

“What exactly do you need this piece for? That might help me to direct you to something that is in your… strategy range.”

“I was attacked,” Skyler replied, figuring that leading with a half-truth could be helpful in making Lawson, in turn, more helpful. “So I need protection. I don’t plan on it happening again.” Ever, in my lifetime, she added to herself. But each of them will know how it feels. 

“And this guy?” Lawson gestured to Jesse.

“He’ll be helping to protect me.”

“I don’t mean to be a killjoy – God knows I’m usually known as the life of the party – but I don’t know that this fella right here is really going to be much help if you’re planning on going up against some heavy hitters – which is what it sounds like you’re doing. If you’re going up against heavy hitters, you’re going to need some heavy backup.”

Jesse’s eyes looked glazed over and far away, as if he was thinking of someone in particular. Skyler wondered if it was Walter who came to mind, and almost laughed out loud at anyone thinking he was “heavy”. Then again, given the things she had learned about him recently, maybe that was just another hidden facet of the man, tucked away with all the other darkness, only let out to dance when the full moon was up.

And now she was the one who would be dancing.

She stared at the wall, then back at Lawson.

“We’ll take it all.”

***

“Can I mention that this is a bad idea? Like, that we need to plan all of this out, like… a lot?” Jesse was crouched behind a hedge, sighing so low that he seemed to sag with the weight of it.

“If we keep planning it, we’re never actually going to do this. By the time you would get around to doing anything about this, these men would have died of old age.”

Jesse sighed.

“Is this really that important to you, Mrs. White? Why not let these guys just… I don’t know, fade off into whatever hell they deserve. Why do you have to have anything to do with it at all?”

“When I brought you along, it wasn’t for your conversation, Jesse. Shut up.”

Jesse reeled back as if he had been slapped. He questioned again why exactly he had chosen to come along with Skyler, other than to stop the woman from getting herself killed. The more that time went on, however, he began to consider that other people might be in more danger than she was.

“They all left, right, the other ones?” Skyler prodded. Jesse glared at her.

“What, can I talk now?”

Skyler made a gesture that generally told Jesse where he could insert his response.

“Yes, they all left. Are we really doing this now, Mrs. White? We can still back out.”

Skyler’s eyes lit up.

“Then we’ll pick him off first. Maybe leave him for his friends to come home and find… It would send a message.”

“Uh, yeah,” Jesse spoke up, “A message to get the hell out of town, or to start a gang war against whoever they thought was responsible. Or, if they have a whiff of this whole plan, to come after you and me. What we need to do is cover our treks, not start acting like we’re cartel and have free reign to leave body parts all over the place.”

Skyler snorted.

“Because you have so much cartel experience.”

Jesse looked away, rather than tell her that, actually, he really did. 

Thankfully, he didn’t have to continue, as Skyler stood up.

“We’re going in.”

Jesse figured it would be fruitless to tell her to stop and rose with her, letting his hand clasp around the holster at his side.

He breathed out. It was going to be now or never, and if this was going to be his last day on Earth, he figured trying to help a woman get vengeance wasn’t the worst way to go. If anyone deserved to die, these men surely did.

Before he could worry about his own moral compass any further, he saw Skyler beginning to rush down the driveway. He had to hurry to catch up to her, trying to hiss under his breath that she should walk, not run, otherwise she would look extremely suspicious – but trying to move at all under the circumstances and talk at the same time was proving a good deal harder than Jesse had anticipated. His heart was beating so hard that he could hear it in his ears like a pounding, like a drum. He wondered if Skyler heard it too. Maybe that was why…

She pulled the door, and to Jesse’s surprise it easily flung open. Maybe these men were careless, always had been or had perhaps gotten careless as of late.

It made sense. They seemed to believe that they had power over everyone, that they were untouchable.

Mrs. White was about to show them that that wasn’t true; that they weren’t safe.

Jesse heard steps coming down the staircase, and he frantically bit the inside of his cheeks. This was really about to happen. This was going to happen again and again and he couldn’t stop it.

But did he want to? If anyone deserved to die, these people did. Maybe he just didn’t want to get his hands dirty, and maybe he just wanted to forget what he had been, who he had been at the end of the day.

There was no time to think about that now. 

They were walking up the stairs – Jesse wondered how Skyler seemed to know where to find this man. Maybe when someone hurt you, really hurt you, they could imprint a part of themselves on you whether they had planned it or not. Like some sort of tracking device. 

The door was shut, and Jesse was about to tell her that this was some sort of sign, a sign that they needed to step back and not do this, when she pulled open the door and walked inside. 

And then she pulled the gun.

Jesse’s mouth dropped open, but he realized in that moment that anything he could have said would have only stayed her hand for seconds, if that.

The man was on the bed with a shirt on but completely naked below the belt. He looked up in confusion before his mouth twisted into anger. 

Jesse didn’t even have a second to breathe before she pulled the trigger.

He remembered thinking later, as the two of them ran down the steps, ran for their lives, that if this had been a movie the man would have said something nasty to provoke her, or she would have had some snarky one-liner, and everything would have played out in slower motion.

But this wasn’t a movie, and that hadn’t been special effects, and Jesse was only surprised by the fact that he was still surprised to see that much blood come out of only one human being.

They made it back to Skyler’s house and Jesse found himself wondering if that much blood had built up in this house somehow, in the walls and in the light fixtures and buried beneath the floorboards, ticking like the heart of the man Edgar Allen Poe had written about.  
The beating Jesse would hear in his mind forever and ever.

***

Skyler found herself wanting to sleep, but she needed to take a bath first. Again, she would be washing away evidence.

But this time, the crime was her own, and she did not feel guilty.

She wondered if this was how Lady MacBeth had started out at first. Maybe over time they had made her more repentant because that was how women should be, in the perfect world – they should not kill a man and walk away from it without losing their souls. Women were supposed to be nurturing, were supposed to be kind and caring and non-violent.

But that was not the way the world worked, not the way Skyler’s world worked anymore, that was. Maybe it had been true in the world before Walt’s choice, but once the door had opened and all the terrors had come in, she needed to decide whether to be a victim of the terrors or one of them. 

And she had made the right choice.


	10. Chapter 10

She slept through the night and dreamed of driving.

Skyler had been driving for the better part of her life – she could still remember turning sixteen and going in to get her license, watching as Marie sat on the sidelines and jealously watched her go through the finish line.

She had never looked back, but she had always been a cautious driver.

Until now, that was. Until this dream. She must have been doing ninety or a hundred on the freeway, and the wind was in her hair and the other cars were moving behind her, going back like they were being yanked back with a slingshot.

She wouldn’t press the brake pedal; she owed herself this. There was debris flying by her but she couldn’t care less. She just had to get to where she was going, and she needed to get there fast.

Things were exploding off to the side, and Skyler awoke to find that she was laughing.

***

“Can we take it easy today and you know, not kill anybody?”

Skyler glared at him. Who was he to play the role of morality, of Jiminy Cricket, now? She had felt that was her role with Walt sometimes, even when she thought she was speaking to a wall or dead air because her husband’s mind was clearly made up.

But now? This was different. Walt’s sins had been a matter of pride. This was a matter of justice, maybe, or maybe just revenge. But wasn’t that the way of the world – an eye for an eye?

She let out a sigh.

“We need to track the next… man…” she paused, wanting to call him a hundred other things but not finding the energy or the motivation, “Anyway. We can start doing that tonight.”

Jesse let out a long sigh, and she wondered why the hell he was even here again. So far, he hadn’t been particularly helpful – couldn’t she just do this all on her own? Hell, if she was going to do “I Spit On Your Grave”, as Saul had taunted, Jenny hadn’t needed any help, had she? 

But now he knew too much, and despite everything, she wasn’t ready to kill him too. He wasn’t a part of this, it wouldn’t be fair. 

She was in this with him, like he was handcuffed to her somehow. As much as she hated it, there was something in knowing that she wasn’t alone, that she didn’t have to go through this herself. That she could look at someone else and know she hadn’t imagined the whole horrible thing, wasn’t killing men because she had just completely lost her shit. After all, that would be what Walter would say. But what had he said when she had asked him why he did the things he did, the horrible things that should have kept someone up at night?

There was always a reason.

“Why not just wait? Maybe everything will be better because you got the guy you did. I mean… you’re gonna be out of this and it’s still going to have happened. Why not… I dunno, go to counseling or something? If… if somebody catches you, you’re going to be in jail forever. Maybe if it’s just this one then you can argue temporary insanity or something – not that I think you’re crazy, Mrs. White, I know you’re not – but if you kill all, what is it, five of them? Then that’s life.”

“Only if I get caught. And like you said, Jesse… I’ve already killed one. So what’s one more? What’s four more?”

***

“What’s four more?” The words were ringing in Jesse’s head as he turned the steering wheel. They were going to find the second man. Well, Saul had found him – they were going to track him.

Jesse found himself wondering if there was any way to back out of this now. Maybe it was like that old phrase, “in for a penny, in for a pound”, or as he had always thought it was, “In for a penny, out for a pound”, like you could get into it for cheap but it would cost you a hell of a lot to get yourself out of it in the end. 

They were going to stalk this man, and then they were going to kill him. 

Jesse remembered that there had been a time when he had never killed a man, when he had thought that having to dissolve Emilio in acid had been the worst thing he would ever have seen (and, God, had it been bad – his dead eyes had stared at Jesse for months in his sleep, and every time he closed his eyes). How many more would he see, before this was all over? Would it be all five? Would they be piled in a heap in his mind, never opening their eyes again?

Yes, these men deserved it, that much was true… But did it have to be the two of them? Why couldn’t they call an end to the death and let some other bulldozer take these men off the face of the Earth? Surely they had problems with someone else; surely someone else had something to gain from their deaths. Why them?

“Skyler,” he said, reaching out to grab her shoulder as they crept across the park. “Maybe…” He paused, unsure if he could ask anything of her at this point. Would she listen? It was unlikely – she was on this trip and the likelihood of getting off of it was slim to none. Maybe he could bargain, at least – wasn’t that one of the stages of grief? “Can you at least promise me we don’t kill anybody today? Maybe just spy on him today and get ready, right? Could we just do that today? And maybe go get dinner or something. You know, something kind of quiet.”

Skyler looked at him and let out a frustrated sigh.

“You don’t have to be involved with this. You know that, right? You keep sitting here looking at me like I just lit all of your favorite childhood toys on fire and am making you watch. It has nothing to do with you. If you want to go home and get dinner, then go ahead and do it!”

Jesse bit his lip, hard. Yes, sure, she had a point – none of this directly involved him. A lot of things to do with Mr. White didn’t directly involve him, and hadn’t for a long time now. When had been the point he should have stepped back and said “enough is enough”? That he didn’t care if he got turned in for being a meth cook as long as he didn’t need to clean up dead people anymore?

But then Gale had happened. Then he had crossed over the point of no return. If he could take it back, he never would have pulled the trigger. He would have walked away and let that terrified man go back and sleep in his apartment in peace.

Now, he would never stop sleeping.

The next man had been easier; that man had been trying to kill Mike. Hell, he had already shot Mike once.

He would have killed Jesse if he could. Not like Gale, not innocent and pleading. A threat.

But he could see that man, too. Not his eyes, not close up, but he could see him and picture the blood that hadn’t reached Jesse but had pooled somewhere, for someone to clean up.

Who? Who cleaned up the horrific messes that Jesse was leaving around the world for others to find? To burn into their own minds as this was all burnt into Jesse’s?

But he couldn’t walk away from her, either. He was already in his hell, so it wasn’t as if he had much further down to go.

Maybe he could still talk her out of all of this.

“Skyler?” he said again, “Can we just… Maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet. But… I’ve done what you… what we, even, just did the other day, and it’s one of those things that… it stays with you, okay? So maybe we should just quit while we’re ahead. We showed that man, and his friends will probably take a hint, too. They’ll be monks for the rest of their lives, I’m sure.”

“And you think that will fix it? You think them learning a lesson is going to fix anything? Jesse…” Skyler broke into a laugh. It came off maniacal to Jesse’s ear, made him flinch. “This isn’t an after-school special, Jesse. And if Walt has taught me anything, it’s that this business is a dangerous game. So I’ve learned how to play, now.”

“Or you could just leave the game, Mrs. White. That’s what I wished I had done when I still had the chance to.”

“You’re talking like you’re Dillinger or Al Capone. Nobody gives you that much credit, let’s be honest.”

“Why are you fighting me, Mrs. White?” Jesse looked at her, exasperated. “I’m trying to save you.”

“You know when you could have saved me, Jesse?” she spat the name. “When you first lured my husband into this mess.”

Jesse threw his hands up. 

“You can’t be serious. You still believe that, after all this? None of this got off the rails until good ol’ Mr. White walked into this. He did it himself. He was the one who started killing people, not me!”

Skyler snorted.

“I don’t doubt it. I wish I could, though. When I met you… again, for real… You took that from me. So why don’t you just turn around and go, Jesse? If you’re so innocent, if you don’t want any more blood on your hands… If you’re going to cry yourself to sleep and have nightmares over that man the other day, over any of these men… Well then, you can turn around and go. I’m not keeping you here. Whatever my husband had on you? He’s gone.”

Jesse shut his eyes tight and took a deep breath. 

“I’m going to stay.”

“Then stay.” Skyler threw up her hands. “But make a decision already. If you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound.”

****

“He doesn’t do much,” Jesse mused aloud. These men seemed to lead very lonely lives, and Jesse wasn’t sure why that filled him with a sense of sadness that he couldn’t shake. Here they were, getting up every day and spending their days doing nothing of consequence, and within the week, they would all be dead. 

It seemed like a waste.

He felt bad for them, even though he didn’t want to. Maybe it was something that had been creeping inside him ever since Gale – he had never used to think about things like this, about how truly horrible it was to end a life, to snuff out someone’s candle.

But here he was, doing it all over again. Once you pop, the fun don’t stop, Jesse thought. 

“That’ll make it easier,” Skyler told him. “It’ll be way easier for the ones who stick to some kind of routine. If they decide to switch it up on us, then that’ll be a real pain in the ass. We’ll make them pay even more.”

“How much more can you do if you’re already killing them?”

“Oh… I could find a way.”

Jesse tried not to shiver.

“Well, anyway… I guess we should figure out what we’re going to do. If that guy realizes his… buddy, or whoever…” Were these men friends? Jesse wondered. Before they had taken a wrong turn somewhere had they been like him, Skinny Pete and Badger? No, there wasn’t anything good that could come from thinking of things like that. He needed to commit to this, couldn’t waffle around it anymore. He couldn’t look at them like people, now. “If he realizes that the other guy went missing, what’s to say that he won’t try to get out of town, too?’

“No… They didn’t get out of town after what they did, even though I could have gone to the cops.”

Jesse wondered at that for a moment. Why hadn’t Skyler done that? Why hadn’t she decided to tell them everything, damn Mr. White to hell, and let the police sort out justice?   
Not that there would be any promise that they’d do the right thing, either. Cops could be just as corrupt as anyone else. But she could have talked to her brother-in-law, couldn’t she? Or her sister?

But that meant she would have to tell them everything, take down the whole house of cards. And she wouldn’t be willing to do that – she would put too much blame on to herself.

Jesse could understand that. But if she got caught doing this, she couldn’t run away from it, could she?

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“What’s our plan, then?”

“We lure him out. That type will get lured out by anything. I’ll play the temptress and then I’ll have him all alone.”

“To do what, though?”

“To end him once and for all, Jesse. Haven’t you been listening?” she paused. “It’s the Virgin Spring.”


	11. Chapter 11

She stood by his door, adjusting the dress like-so. She was playing the same part she had played for the IRS, ditzy and clueless. It had been fun the first time, tossing off all of her intelligence and pretending to be an airhead. It wouldn’t hurt to be like that, she thought. It was a curse to know what was going on in the world, how evil it could really be. Ignorance was bliss.

It had been weird to walk into the nearest clothing stores – it had turned out to be a Marshall’s – and feel like she was picking out clothes for someone else. Marie, maybe – she had always been intelligent but she’d also always had a flair for the dramatic, especially back in college. It was the kind of dress that college-Marie would approve of, definitely. It was bright red in a way that made Skyler think of how Carrie’s mom would have viewed her prom dress.

It was a perfect dress to play the harlot in. It was how they already saw her; not much needed to change. With men like this, women were just something for them to take.

It was about time someone took something back from them, wasn’t it?

She had instructed Jesse to wait in the car, so she could be within sight but not within earshot. What did she even need him for? She needed to cut him loose eventually… but why hadn’t she? Maybe it was just nice to have a partner in crime, to feel like there was someone she could talk to about all of this. She tried to ignore the voice in her head reminding her of the old saying about how two people could only keep a secret if one was dead.

He was going to be her support through this, as much as she hated that word (one of those buzz words, Oprah words, book of the week words). He was going to fill for her, in a way, what she had hoped Walt could do one day. 

She knocked on the door again. She had seen this in the movie, too. But were people drawn in as easily in real life, when it wasn’t necessarily to advance the plot? Or were people really just a Deus ex machina? 

She saw one brown eye peeking out from behind the peephole. In movies, people rarely looked through peepholes, but if they did, it usually didn’t do them any good.

People saw what they wanted to see, Skyler figured.

The door opened a moment later, and a man was looking at her – she should have noticed him by the eyes, but they had to be fully in that damned head for her to recognize him. How could she have forgotten what this devil looked like, even for a second? Maybe she was losing her touch. 

“Who’s there?”

“My car broke down,” Skyler purred in a perfect voice she hoped would be considered “sexy” by this asshole. It had worked before, hadn’t it? Just laugh and giggle and twirl your hair. Maybe he would recognize her, but by then it might be too late.

He might not even recognize her at all. Maybe for him, this had been just another day in his life.

Maybe that’s what things were like with Walter, now. Just another dead body buried in a shallow grave.

If Jesse was right, maybe that would be what it would be like for her when this was done. And maybe, looking at it one way, that was for the best. Walter certainly had no more sleepless nights; these men didn’t. Why should Skyler have to tussle with right and wrong all alone, while the scumbags of the Earth sat around untouched? Why shouldn’t she have the same freedom?

She had earned it these past few weeks. 

“Your car broke down?” the voice behind the door echoed.

“That’s right.” Skyler tried to sound helpless, hopeless. Defenseless. That was what drew men like this in, didn’t it? The hapless fly in a spider’s web. Or a fish in a crocodile’s jaws. “Please, can you let me in to use your phone? I need to call a toll truck… I have a cell phone, but it died.”

“Well…” She heard him unlatch the door and open it a moment later, before ushering her in. “You came to the right place, lady. But maybe you shouldn’t have used up all your battery playing Candy Crush.” He chuckled at his own joke. “Phone’s in the back. It’s getting kind of late for somebody who looks like you to be out and about anyway. You sure your husband ain’t looking for you?”

“Husband? I don’t have one.” That wasn’t even much of a lie. Skyler had stopped wearing her wedding ring months ago. Maybe she had thought about branching out, finding someone else. Not Ted, of course – that had been a mistake from start to finish. That whole disaster seemed years old, now. 

“That’s what I like to hear!” the man exclaimed, “Come on in, lady. Take a seat. No need to hurry off.”

She stepped inside and looked around. Where did a monster live? A dragon up in a tower? A troll under a bridge? Or a nice suburban home with a big TV and a comfortable gray couch? This man’s house looked like a hundred other houses with normal people in them.

“Take a seat,” he said again, “I’m Pablo. What’s your name?”

“Jeanette,” Skyler supplied easily. She had spent her entire childhood coming up with other names for herself; better names that people could spell without difficulty. She didn’t think she would have chosen to saddle her child with something like “Skyler”. 

“That’s a nice name. You French?”

“Yeah, a little bit.” 

“Take a seat. I’ll bring you a phone. You’re looking all nervous, lady. No need for any of that.”

“May I use your restroom?” Skyler asked. She let the words tumble out, as if she was going to fall over herself trying to get them out of her in time.

She was too good at this. She shouldn’t be good at this.

But there were animals who asked the predator into their lair. There were brightly colored poisoned frogs. She was going to be one of them.

It was going to feel… good? Maybe not good, not exactly. It was going to be a burden lifted off her shoulders. 

“It’s up the stairs and down the hall.”

Skyler rushed up the stairs quickly, feeling more like prey than predator for the first time since this morning had begun. Why had she done this on his territory? Of course, he would know his own home better than she did. He had all the advantages – what if he wasn’t even really alone in here?

When she reached the top of the stairs, she took a left and made her way to the end of the hall. There was the bathroom, as promised, and surprisingly well-kept considering what this man did for a living, as well as for extra-curricular activities. It was as if he was a squatter in someone else’s home, and maybe he was.

She reached down and felt for the pistol in her pocket. Guns were noisy, frustrating things. She hated them.

But some things were a necessary evil these days. 

Now, to the question of how to tackle this new challenge. Should she simply wait here until he came up the stairs looking for her? Or creep back down and attempt to catch him unaware?

What was the best way? And why was this proving more difficult than the first target on her list? This should get easier, not harder, she thought bitterly.

“Hello?” she heard the man’s voice calling. It had a sing-song quality to it, like he was looking for a kitty cat instead of stalking human prey. “Where are you, my lovely? Where are you running off to?”

He didn’t know that this kitty had claws.

Skyler quickened her pace and ran into the bathroom, shutting the door. She let out a breath – this would buy her a few moments, at least, but it also drove her further into a corner.

She deeply regretted having watched Psycho in her youth. 

She shut her eyes and took in a deep breath. She would survive this. She would, in fact, win over this – she would be the avenging angel, a spirit in the dark. The rest of the men would think of her and fear her and things would be all right all over again.

And then she could begin to get everything back to normal, to begin to see light again.

She could sleep again, once they were all sleeping too, sleeping forever.

But it all had to begin with this, this man, right now. This single man. 

A tiny voice, a quiet one, told her that she could still walk away from the rest. It sounded kind of like Jesse Pinkman’s voice.

She didn’t want to hear it anymore; she had come too far, now. She had come too far to walk away and let them keep getting away with it – they couldn’t keep getting away with it.

Too many people had already. Walter, for one. That man had been getting away with everything since this whole thing began. But Skyler… No, she could never catch a break. She had to be perfect at all times.

Men’s right to be wrong did not extend to women. If a man did something wrong, they were an anti-hero, and if a woman called him on that wrong, then she was just a nagging bitch.

It wasn’t any different than Skyler knew it had always been, but it was kind of depressing to turn that knowledge over in her head now, again, as she prepared to do something that might label her as an anti-hero.

Or as a villainous bitch who needed to walk away when she had the chance.

Or maybe just someone who should walk away while she had another chance. 

The sound of a fist banging on the door cut her out of her thoughts, and she jolted in her hiding spot. 

She hadn’t locked the door. Why hadn’t she locked the door?

It swung open, and Skyler fumbled into her pocket, pulling out the gun. 

She saw his feet appear in the door first, and she swung it first, slamming the metal against his head. There was the sound of a horrifying crack, and Skyler flinched. 

He fell across the floor in a crumpled heap. 

She looked down, tilting her head to the side as she perused the sight.

That hadn’t exactly been her plan… but it worked. Oddly enough, it worked. When she crouched down, she pressed a finger to his neck to feel his pulse. It was faint, but still there.

That part hadn’t worked so well.

What was she supposed to do with that?

***

She had been in there way too long. He never should have let her go in alone.

Jesse pressed his hands against the steering wheel so hard that he felt the imprints against his palms; that was what he was doing, wasn’t it? Making marks that would never be shed, would never be washed away.

He had once pictured himself with Andrea and Brock, shaping up to be part of a family. Smiling and bringing Brock to ball games, to pony rides, to all of the things a normal kid should have. 

But now? Now, on top of everything, he knew about this. He was a part of this and he didn’t know what to do about it.

He should go in, he should make sure that she was safe. But what if that meant killing the man inside? Adding another notch to his belt and sliding deeper into hell?

Maybe this man deserved to die. But did Jesse deserve to kill him? Maybe it was better to step away. What was it people said sometimes, to let God sort it all out? But that was what they said after saying that they should all be stricken down, sent somewhere else.

Somewhere where one day, Jesse would join them.

But if Skyler was in danger, and Jesse did not help her… wasn’t that worse? It would be a failure to act, he would let down Mr. White and he would let down himself. He would deserve to rot, anyway. 

He tested the front door and found it open. Stupid man, couldn’t even figure out how to lock his door in the middle of a crisis. Even though this man was a horrible one, he wasn’t that much of a seasoned criminal, Jesse figured. A smarter person would know how to plan – that was the kind of man that it seemed as if Jesse was becoming. He didn’t want it to be.

Where would they be? He couldn’t screw around for long, or else he would lose the element of surprise. Right now, that was about all he had working for him.   
He rushed up the stairs, trying to be quiet. If Skyler was luring him into some kind of weird sex thing, they’d have headed for the bedroom, weren’t they?

He had to hope that was true. 

He nearly tripped over the body before he saw it, and when he did he had to bite his lip so hard it bled to keep from screaming. 

“Oh, good,” Skyler said, stepping out, into the hallway. “You’re here. I started to think you had forgotten about me.”

Jesse stared at her.

“You did it again…”

Skyler shrugged.

“Had it coming, didn’t he?”

Jesse couldn’t really argue with that. It wasn’t like Gale, it was more like the man he had shot in Mexico. 

That didn’t make him any less dead or any less right in front of him, however.

“What do we do with him?” he asked, instead of arguing with her. They had argued about the morality of the whole situation for far too long now – there was nothing to be gained from continuing that conversation any longer. 

“We’ll need to get rid of him, unless we want the police coming and finding my DNA all over him.”

“Did you touch anything in the house? Like, fingerprints, yo. They’ll find them, and they’ll track you…”

“I don’t think so.” Everything was such a milky daze that Jesse wanted to shake her, shake himself, to snap out of it. She seemed smarter than this, she had worked smarter than this with the last one. “Should we bleach the place?”

Jesse let out a long sigh. 

“Let’s get to it, I guess.”


End file.
